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November 18, 2008

Curiosity (Calling and Decoys) Killed the Deer

-By Rich Miller

My much anticipated Kansas hunting trip was finally here. When I arrived in Kansas the weather couldn’t have been any worse for hunting whitetails. The temperature was in the high seventies and the wind was blowing thirty-five miles per hour. If there is one thing that shuts the movement of these whitetails down, it is hot weather during the rut. The first few days I did see a good many small bucks but the big boys were staying hidden. The bucks responded well to calling and decoying; we just needed the wind to die down a little and for the temperature to drop.

The day I arrived at camp we scouted a new piece of property that we leased this year. There were a lot of deer signs in the area, but they had not cut the corn yet. So I figured I would give it a few days and maybe they would cut it. After I hunted Sunday morning I decided to hang a stand on the cornfield to hunt that afternoon. When I got there the farmer had cut half the cornfield on the side where I was going to hang the stand.

Sunday was perfect as for as the weather goes. The wind had layed and it was in the low fifties for the high. So wouldn’t you know it when I got to the cornfield about three o’clock for my hunt the combine was in the field cutting corn. To say the least I was a little disappointed, but I was already there and I really didn’t have time to go anywhere else. Plus it looked like he was about finished. Well I went ahead and set up my Carry-Lite deer decoy and got in my stand.

The combine got out of the field about 4:00 and I had the first deer come in the field about 4:45. At 5:00 I saw a doe come over the horizon about a thousand yards away. While I was checking her out in my binoculars I caught movement coming from behind her and it didn’t take me long to realize that he was a shooter. Although I considered him a shooter I figured the odds of him coming into bow range were slim to none. I did feel like the doe should be headed for the cornfield that I was in to feed. While these two deer were easing my way, another doe coming from the north cut them off and came into the field that I was in. While the buck had closed the distance considerably he was still about four hundred yards out. I kept grunting and snort wheezing hoping he would see my decoy. He would look every time I called to him but all of his focus stayed on the doe he was following. He started chasing the doe pretty aggressively and she joined the other doe that was already in the cornfield and they were feeding in my direction. The buck wasn’t paying the decoy very much attention but the two does started heading in my direction. As the does were getting closer the buck started paying more attention to the decoy. The buck came around and tried to get between the two does and the decoy and gave me a perfect broadside 26-yard shot. When my arrow found its mark the buck never made it out of the field.

When I first saw this buck I never in my wildest dreams figured that I could get him in bow range, but I just kept calling and calling. I normally would have never called as constantly as I did on this hunt but it got to the point where I didn’t have anything to lose. I think between the calling and the decoy that the curiosity of the does is what killed this buck.

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